Clockwise from left: before and after… the considerably fuller Macif-inspired bow section that was grafted on at CDK to transform Foncia 2008 into Mare 2013
many newer boats a run for their money. The only Imocas now being developed
this way are Initiatives Cœur (Sam Davies) and PRB (Vincent Riou) – two boats to watch in the 2020 Vendée Globe.
End of all dreams? So does no turbo-charged Acciona mean the end of all my dreams and maybe stop sailing? No way! Fortunately Merfyn Owen put me in
had designed for the Mini Transat race itself. Which left us with a hull designed for foils but sailed without foils. Not an ideal situation. Nonetheless the boat was very fast.
Probably if we had designed it as a non- foiling boat in the first place we would have been better off. But our vision was a fully foiling Mini. Sure, we would have loved to have built the foils but if you are short of money you have to make short- cuts. The foils would have cost us 70,000 euros; it was a no-brainer to drop the foil concept given we were aware we could not find any extra money. But even with the non-foiling Mini I
finished second in the Mini Transat. A result I am really proud of. On the basis that I had little room left for improvement in the class I decided that my Mini career would end with the 2018 season.
PR kills performance After the Mini Transat I got involved with the Imoca campaign of Offshore Team Germany to do something cool with the 2011 Owen Clarke-designed Imoca 60 Acciona they had bought. A boat still with some amazing unrealised potential. The voice inside me was happy again as
a Vendée Globe on a very interesting boat was looming on the horizon… Unfortu- nately completely different ideas about how to modify the boat soon led to a split. My goal was a podium finish in the
34 SEAHORSE
2020 Vendée Globe with a boat that was cleverly modified to achieve this. Offshore Team Germany and their project manager wanted to transform a good design into a floating billboard to do PR races. Their choices were bizarre, including
buying a super-light and fragile second- hand rig from PRB, and in total they cost much the same as the modifications I wanted to carry out to make the boat com- petitive again. It is a real shame for both the boat and
her designers; Acciona has more potential than people know but now that potential will never be seen. There is still a hole in the Imoca 60 rule
in terms of the mast for a boat built before 2016; taking advantage of this we had something nice in the plan for the 2020 Vendée Globe. Today’s one-design Imoca mast is the weak link in terms of perfor- mance for boats built since 2016, as these masts cannot cope with the loads that can now be generated by foils when the boats are pressed – therefore the skippers often have to ease back on the accelerator. However, on an older boat you can
install a bulletproof mast, reinforce the structure and build very wide and power- ful foils – more powerful than the new boats can cope with except in the perfect conditions. So a correctly modified older (also narrower) design could be pushed harder and in some conditions might well be exceptional. You could definitely give
contact with Andrew Thomson who had set up a yard to build Class40s in Cape Town. Merf and Andrew had agreed that I should campaign their new boat this year on the Class40 circuit and including the two-handed Transat Jacques Vabre. For the TJV, however, we still need to
find new sponsors in the months to come – business as usual. It’s stressful but by now I am getting used to it. What pleases me with this task is the
possibility of developing the new design while also working with them on a Mark2 version. A production Class40 Scow to be sold for a reasonable price… Merfyn, Andrew and I make for a good fit – we all have a burning vision.
11th-hour Vendée Globe? As this little voice in my head is still stalking my mind and as Merfyn Owen and some very innovative French designers are still addicted to the idea of a ‘more interesting’ Imoca, there is still a chance of an 11th-hour Vendée project. I am used to it by now. Sometimes these projects create a strong
positive energy that can deliver a result almost by itself. But we do need a sponsor or owner who likes this idea as much as we do! If there is no Vendée Globe 2020 I will
keep on pushing to do the 2024 Vendée with the Route du Rhum 2022 on a Class40 en route. I am still so full of energy that I will keep on going for little while yet. OK, the dinosaurs are dead but the
crocodiles are from the same family. And they are still alive and kicking.
q
ALAMY
CHRISTOPHE BRESCHI
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